The White Savior Concept…

It’s a lazy Monday, I’ve got a lot of Hausaufgaben zu machen, I’m updating my social pages while ignoring the aufräumen I’m supposed to be doing and trailing blogs to view contents and I found a post by a writer for the BGLH site called Chinwe. Now my post isn’t about her writing skills or the topic. It’s dealing with the comments which is what always takes me to that site. Sad Ich weiß aber du must know that a lot of times, the comments move away from the reason behind the post and begin a whole new subject.

From an old post I uploaded,I talked about how upset I had become with the natural hair community. For some reason, the fact that black women are embracing their true texture has opened up a whole can of worms, maggots, beans and sardines!

It goes from hating yourself because you wear weaves, to being segregated from the black women that choose to keep on with chemically enhancing their hair to racism. Now a lot of women are claiming relaxers destroyed their hair as their reason for returning natural and while this may be true for some people, what does it say about the others?

Questions like why did you return natural is flowing around and the easiest responses are: relaxers destroyed my hair, I was living a lie, I was tired of spending money(now this I find funny cos ppl still manage to spend loads of cash on hair products and let’s not even attack companies that feel the need to put outrageous prices on hair products…story for another day)

So now, Ms Chinwe talked about how she hated her kinky kitchen(a word I never heard of until today which is apparently used to describe the extra kinky curls at your nape) and that it was her “white” boyfriend who opened her eyes to the cuteness of her nape hair.

A lot of times, you hear or read about cases where people of other races are more appreciative of the African hair and more supportive of the decision to return natural and this I know to be true from people I know personally. In my case, I was already back to my kinks before I met Gorgeousness but he is one of my greatest supporters in regards to keeping my hair natural.

Now the whole savior syndrome from my understanding is where black women feel the need to announce that their “white lover” made them love their kinky hair and while this is not a bad thing, racism comes into play almost at the word “white”.

The question becomes; why should race be added? Why not just say my lover and leave out their skin color? Why feel the need to stamp in the fact that they are of a different race from you?

Who says people of other races including yours can’t encourage you to return and stay natural? Why is the white savior flag being displayed more often? Don’t look at me for answers!

My greatest supporters are my beautiful twin sister and my gorgeous husband who happens to be Caucasian and I’m not ashamed to admit he knows my hair better than I do(the poor love even researches afro hair texture and once explained to me why my hair doesn’t look like it’s growing when I grumbled about its length)

A lot of people would disagree with me, but my belief is that it’s all just hair and no big deal. Sure it has helped a lot of people understand who they are, it has helped build confidence and determination. It builds perseverance and hey let’s not forget DIY skills are off the charts with natural hair!

At the end of the day, you can be who you are regardless of what hair you are sporting or what race you are or who you are dating or married to.

As black women, we need to understand that words however they have been written or spoken should not determine how our lives play out.